Liz Funk is the author of Supergirls Speak Out: Inside the Secret Crisis of Overachieving Girls. Her book deals with the pressures many women and girls face to be ‘perfect’ at everything, often to their own personal detriment. She very kindly agreed to answer some questions from me about how this concept applies to the workplace.
STA: Do you think that, despite many laws and other concentrated efforts for gender equality, women are treated differently in the workplace?
LF: Absolutely. At each and every level, there are different standards and expectations for women. The most frequently echoed frustration that I heard from young women working on the job search and starting in their career track is not knowing what to do with their femininity, and trying to strike a balance between being cute and pretty and being competent. There is also a tendency to view women supervisors as mother figures, and we hold women in the office to a certain standard of niceness, and there’s a real trickle-down effect that compels many women at work to sugar-coat things.
STA: What particular goals, pressures, and ideas do women bring into the office?
LF: I personally feel that femininity is a great tool. As a whole, women are very intuitive and they’re natural negotiators. Powerful women aren’t always bulls the way powerful men frequently are, and I think women are better at meeting people where they’re at and finding common ground. Also, something that I’ve overwhelmingly noticed is that girls are much better at impressing others in workplace and having career common-sense, and I think they’re much less overentitled than guys (which is something that is scarcely brought-up in this “Gen Y overentitlement” media brouhaha).
STA: Where do you think this notion of “women must be perfect” come from?
Continue reading ‘the sta interview: liz funk’
If anyone ever needed a career makeover, Lindsay Lohan would be a pretty good candidate. Despite her protestations that she’s an actress, these days she’s mostly known for her super-thinness, her alleged drug and alcohol abuse, and her back and forth relationship with DJ Samantha Ronson. The New York Daily News asked several PR experts (including my friend Joe Ciarallo) what advice they’d give LiLo if she were their client. Below, I translate their tips into stuff that could also work for you:
- Develop self-discipline. Lindsay needs to throw herself into her acting and be taken seriously again. You can do the same thing by diving headfirst into your work - you’ll only have good accomplishments to show for it. Remember that your actual job performance comes first and all other work stuff (office politics and the like) should be second.
- Network well. In this case, it’s not just about going to events and meeting people - it’s about meeting the right people. It is fun to go to parties all weekend and get free drinks, but the thing that will help you most in the long run is actually meeting people in your industry who are potentially good contacts to have if you’re looking for a new gig.
Continue reading ‘career advice for lindsay lohan’
When planning a workplace prank, it is helpful sometimes to let a few of your other coworkers in on the joke. Your joke might require a few other people in order to work better, plus it’s always good to have someone to act as a lookout. And when you fail to let the appropriate people know what’s coming up? Well, here’s a cautionary tale:
Hands scraped and bloody from climbing two barbed-wire fences and out of breath from a half-mile sprint, James Clithero called 9-1-1 about 5 p.m. Thursday from a stranger’s home in Southeast Portland.
He was reporting that his boss had just gunned down a co-worker.
“I was in there working today and my boss came downstairs and started firing a gun at one of the employees,” he told the dispatcher.
So this guy risked his life in order to report that his boss shot a coworker…what a hero, right?
Continue reading ‘when an office prank isn’t funny’
Former Illinois Governor Ron Blagojevich won’t follow in the footsteps of formerly disgraced politicians who disappear into fake jobs in the private sector or “spending time with family.” No way, the guy with the Donald Trump wannabe hair is determined to make the most of his notoriety. First, he was offered a part on upcoming reality show I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!, but a judge ruled he couldn’t go to Costa Rica to film the series. So what’s he to do instead? Well, famous Nevada brothel the Moonlite Bunny Ranch has offered “Blago” an internship.
This apprenticeship could be featured throughout the upcoming season of HBO’s Cat House. Rod’s willpower would be challenged daily by the ladies as they bribe him to acquire finer rooms or better working hours and days off. In lieu of Rod’s work throughout the apprenticeship Dennis Hof [the Bunny Ranch's owner] will pay him a handsome amount of money.
So, if I want to get a paid internship that involves working around naked chicks all day, I just have to be elected to public office and then turn out to be a colossal fuckup? This may take vanity internships to a whole new level. Somewhere, Sean Avery is pissed.
Alli Sims, Britney Spears’ fake cousin and former personal assistant, is doing everything she can to extend her four minutes of pseudo-fame. Let’s recap, shall we?
- August ‘07: Gets subpoenaed to testify for Kevin Federline in Britney’s custody case.
- September ‘08: Organizes “trunk show” in Alabama that basically consists of her selling Britney’s stuff and swag that Alli accumulated during her assistant days.
- October ‘08: Is banned from communicating or spending time with Britney.
- January ‘09: Gets sued over failed reality show venture and is accused of lying about her singing ability and her relationship with Britney.
And now, Alli has a single called “Driving Blind.” Is this a reference to that time Britney got caught driving with her son in her lap instead of in a car seat? I feel like it’s a miracle this single isn’t called “I KNOW BRITNEY SPEARS. SERIOUSLY. WE’RE COUSINS! PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEE!” It’s the little things we have to be grateful for, you know?
From an MTV press release about one of their new fall shows, The Stylist:
This new reality series follows a diverse group of struggling junior assistants as they toil for three glamorous, highly successful celebrity stylists. The series follows the young junior assistants on the job - music videos, movie premieres, photo shoots - and in their personal lives as they find romance, plot against each other, and try to make it big in a cut-throat industry. At the end of each season, one junior assistant will be signed to a stylist contract with the Margaret Maldonado agency. The Stylist turns the reality competition format upside-down, with no staged challenges or eliminations. The jobs are real, the stakes are real and for these young people, the prospect of success or failure is very real. Organic performance evaluations will always allow the viewer a sense of who’s ahead and who’s in trouble. And because the junior assistants are always faced with the knowledge that only one of them will get signed, they are always looking into the faces of their competition.
A couple of things.
1. What the fuck is an organic performance evaluation? Is it made of soy? Does it require compost?
2. The show is produced by Bunim-Murray, the people responsible for The Real World and - even better - The Real World/Road Rules Challenge. Will Coral be on this show to make fun of the assistants? Because I would watch that.
3. Why did they choose this title? Are they aware of the existence of Stylista?
4. “Cutthroat” is one word, no dashes.
With a few exceptions - like The Naked Cowboy or Peaches Geldof - most people who have personal assistants have them because they are busy people with way too much to do. However, “branding” “expert” Peter Arnell has an assistant and still managed to fall way behind on a book project. How far behind? The book won’t be coming out at all, and Arnell has been ordered to return part of the hefty advance he got. Here’s my favorite line from the article on BNET:
Arnell failed to deliver the book despite having the assistance of two ghostwriters, a personal assistant, his wife and an editor at HarperCollins. He only turned in 25,000 words of a promised 80,000 manuscript — and HarperCollins sued to get its money back.
Wow. For a rich executive type like him, he sure seems to be a bonehead. Although, I’d be really curious to know what the assistant was doing all day - was he/she just busy with Arnell’s other business, or do they do nothing all day and have the greatest job ever?
April 28th is Equal Pay Day. I’m not sure exactly whether the day is supposed to be about “celebrating” the fact that men and women are allegedly being paid equally or about bemoaning the fact that men still make more than women for doing the same jobs. I’m going with the latter, obviously. Marie Claire has some sobering stats that we should keep in mind today:
- For every dollar a man makes, a woman makes 78 cents. That number has climbed 1 cent since 2006.
- Fresh-out-of-college women make $15,498 less per year than the boys; over a 35-year career, they’ll make $210,000 less.
- A 25-year-old female PR specialist makes the same as her male colleagues; 20 years later, she’ll make about $35,000 less.
- She-EOs make $303,000 less than their male counterparts.
- Male primary-care physicians make 22 percent more than lady docs.
- Male IT workers make 11.9 percent more than geekettes.
- According to the American Association of University Women, at the current rate, we’ll reach pay equity in 2040.
Woo, what a fun holiday! Time for some Jager bombs in the break room!
The Broadway musical 9 to 5, just like the movie it’s based on, is about employees dealing with a shitty boss. Well, it turns out that the show’s stars didn’t have to reach too far back into their memories to get some emotional recollection. Here are a couple of their worst boss stories:
I worked at this Mexican restaurant when I was in college and there was this manager who was a pompous idiot who thought he was the coolest thing on the face of the planet. He always found ways to truly annoy and criticize you and then he’d go back into his office and do a line of coke.” Best revenge “The head office [of the Mexican restaurant] brought in this new assistant manager to learn the ropes to replace the head manager. And when my boss found that out, he did everything he could to fire me. But the assistant manager came into the office with me and said, ‘You can fire Marc, but the minute he walks out that door, I’m rehiring him.’ So that was it.
- Marc Kudisch (who plays… the boss)
I worked at a talent agency here in New York answering phones. The owner of the agency would scream at me if I didn’t recognize his voice. I was so terrified every time I answered the phone. And if I screwed up, he says, ‘DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA?!’ To this day, I’m terrified of answering the phone. I think I was traumatized by that voice.
- Allison Janney (who plays Violet, the Lily Tomlin character)
When she was preparing for her role as Louise, Carrie Bradshaw’s assistant in the Sex and the City movie, Jennifer Hudson traded places with her own PA, Walter, for a day. While Jennifer has always spoke lovingly about Walter, I didn’t realize how far back their relationship actually went. From this week’s Time Out Chicago interview with Jennifer:
Thanks in part to her friend Walter Williams III, Hudson learned about music outside the church, too. They met in the sixth grade at Yale Elementary. By the eighth grade, “He was like, ‘I’m gonna be your manager.’ I was like, ‘Boy, please.’” He booked her at South Side gay clubs, competing against drag queens. Now as her assistant, Williams “handles everything.”
Nice work, Walter! Also, time to add Jennifer to the list of celebrities who have or had their childhood friends as their personal assistants. That list includes Dolly Parton and Judy Ogle and Justin Timberlake and Trace Ayala.